Co-ordinated by Ben Pugh, the event enabled visitors to assemble between dusk and midnight over a three-week period and see 70ft high-definition portrait-shape projections depicting work from cutting-edge New York artists Mark Downie, Shelley Eshkar and Paul Kaiser under the title Recovered Light.
The task to deliver the content was entrusted by City of York Council to locally-based video specialists, YSL Videowall Hire; they in turn sub-contracted The Picture Works, whose director, Robin Wealleans, knew that his Christie Roadie 25K 25,000 ANSI lumens 3-chip DLP projectors were probably alone in being able to meet the stringent criteria.
Wealleans explained that the projection was required to illuminate the gridwork of scaffolding that now covers the entire eastern façade of the Minster; this in turn obscures from view the Great East Window, a masterpiece of Renaissance stained glass and possibly the largest of its kind in the world. "Recovered Light was intended to act as a kind of x-ray, focusing on what lay behind the scaffold - the Great Window and the interior of the Minster itself."
Fitted with a fixed 1:1 lens, the Roadie 25K was set up in St. William's College - a Tudor building situated opposite - taking a DVI signal to deliver the 70ft x 40ft images in true 2K native resolution, and in 16:9 aspect ratio. The Roadie 25K had to be customised to deal with cooling issues once it was placed on its side. "Because of the extreme cold temperature we had to close the plate-glass window and shoot through it - but it all worked fabulously," he explained. "We thought we might need to use two projectors twin-stacked but one turned out to be more than adequate."
Given the scale of this project, full HD projection was essential. "This was the largest HD image projection that I am aware of," said Wealleans. "Each pixel measured about 1cm, but even at this size it produced an extraordinary image."
Aside from Christie's masterful delivery, much of the wow factor was created by the design itself, according to Stuart Lloyd of YSL Videowall Hire, who customised the projector rig using their custom cradle.
"The projector was driven from a Mac, fitted with ATI graphics card, and the images morphed into each other in a continuous loop over a seven-hour period," explained Lloyd, who oversaw the project with YSL director, Richard Pask. During this period all 116 stained glass windows behind the scaffolding were addressed individually, using Pixel Shaders to blur and morph the images. "All the colours were complementary to the colours in the stained glass and the result was some staggering eye candy.
"Artist Mark Downie was very savvy and had written his own proprietary tools in order to show off the material (including verses from the bible)," he continued. "It is easier to write your own programme, including the hardware scaling and morphing directly onto the graphics card."
(Jim Evans)
